February Activities for Little Learners

February almost slipped by without me posting this resource! Luckily, because of winter break, I was able to have some time to finish it up and post it before the end of the month! 

To see the why and how behind this resource, you can check out this blog post.

I love sensory bins because they provide so many opportunities for learning through multiple senses! You can also be creative when setting them up and use whatever you already have around the house!

My little one loves the binder! I think it's the novelty of the activities being in a binder that he loves the most. Ha!

Flipping through "flash cards" is always fun! Sometimes I leave them off the ring so he can spread them all out.

If you're interested in these activities for your little one, you can find them here! To see other random posts about what I do with my toddler, make sure to follow me on Instagram at Teach Dream Inspire!

January Activities for Little Learners

As a busy teacher-mom, I created these activities as a fun way to teach, connect, and play with my own little one at the end of a long day. Kids learn best through play, so it was important for me to provide my own child with a variety of activities that we could pull out and change up as needed. I also created these activities to align with my state’s (Georgia) early learning and development standards for ages 24-36 months. The standards covered throughout these activities include, but are not limited to, one-to-one correspondence, building knowledge of numbers and quantities, using senses to explore the environment and process information, fine motor skills, self-expression, demonstrating persistence, following directions, acquiring vocabulary, nonverbal communication, developing print awareness, classification, exploring spatial relationships, developing knowledge of the properties of Earth and the sky, and making connections between objects and ideas.

Here is a peek into the activities I created...

My best advice for using these activities with your little learner is to have fun! Do I expect that my kiddo will sit and engage with me for hours... no way! If it is no longer fun for him, or I, we stop! Again, I whole heartedly believe that learning occurs through play and play should be fun! I do not expect, or force, him to be able to do everything in this product each and everyday. I simply use these activities as an opportunity to spend quality time together. I just love watching him explore! Toddlers are unique and can surprise you! All you have to do is encourage and interact with them, and you may just learn something too!

You can visit my store to grab these activities for half off through tomorrow! You can also check out Georgia's Early Learning and Development Standards here.

Toddler Play

Goodness it's been awhile since I've blogged! I've been enjoying my summer and I hope you have too! This summer has been all about spending as much time with my little family as possible and traveling. One trip we took over the 4th was to the beach. A little vitamin sea was definitely needed! As you probably know, traveling with a toddler can be a bit of a challenge!! For me, organizing things needed for a trip is a must! I wanted to find something that I could tote a few toys around in and that would be easy to travel with. 

I found this Sterilite Stack and Carry box on Amazon and had to try it out! It worked out great and was the perfect size to hold what I wanted to put in it. Actually, I could have stored A LOT more! 

My thoughts for the top of the box was to create a sensory bin. I wanted it to be ocean themed, of course, since we were heading to the beach! I bought these wooden Hape ocean animals and I just loved the size of them and my little one loved naming the ocean animals! I also picked up the Helping Hands Fine Motor Tool Set by Learning Resources to use in my sensory bin. The set comes with four different tools. We just used the tweezers and the large scoop for this sensory bin. To be completely honest...I used the crinkled blue paper pictured above to hide the blocks in and it didn't really work out the way I had intended it to once my two year old started to play with it. It ended up EVERYWHERE!!! He doesn't quite get the concept of just taking out the blocks and leaving the filler in the bin. Sigh! He sure did have fun though! Next time I will just use balled up tissue paper. 

In the bottom bin I put in a set of Hape Under the Sea blocks. I loved all of the different shapes that came in this set. My two year old really only played with the cubes though. If you look closely you can catch a glimpse of some of those little blue crinkled paper bits! Ha! 

Now that summer is coming to an end for me, only a week and a half left, I'll be back to blogging more regularly! Until then friends, enjoy your Wednesday!